THE ARTS / Progressive poetry, in the form of Hebrew hip-hop

Loolwa Khazzoom, Special to The Chronicle

Published
4:00 am PDT, Friday, October 15, 2004

In Israel, their gold-selling album tops the charts of radio just two months after release. Tickets to their concerts sell out as soon as they are announced. Now, the seven members of the hip-hop group Hadag Nahash are bringing their politically progressive sounds to the Bay Area this month in their first American tour.

For Sha'anan Streett, Hadag Nahash's founder and lead rapper, a trip to the Bay Area is a return to the band's roots: Like many Israeli youth at the end of their army service, Streett traveled around the world in 1994, spending time in the Far East, Australia and finally the United States where he lived for eight months in Berkeley.

"I'd heard of hip-hop before," Streett recalls, "like Run DMC and the Beastie Boys. Some of my friends had been into that music before I left Israel. But I wasn't into hip-hop till I heard 106-KMEL, while stuck in traffic jams around the Bay Area. I liked the music they played -- Notorious BIG, Snoop Dogg, Warren G., commercial West Coast stuff -- and I started fooling around with it in Hebrew."

Although he began writing hip-hop while in Berkeley, Streett says he didn't write anything worthwhile until he returned to Israel. "I was on bus 480 from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv," Streett recalls, "and the sound of the engine got a rhythm going in my brain. I began to write 'Shalom Salaam Peace.' " Meaning "peace" in Hebrew and Arabic, the song -- which went on to be popular across Israel -- reflects the band's penchant for social activism.

Even the name Hadag Nahash embodies the group's spirit. Guy Mar, the band's DJ and one of the first hip-hop DJs in Israel, reveals that the words are a mix up of Nahag Hadash -- "new driver" -- a sign everyone must post on their cars' rear windows during the first year of licensed driving. Streett came up with the name as a form of protest.

"This is the great idea they have to reduce car accidents?" he scoffs. "People either honk at the new driver or stick to (him) or pass him on the right. So actually, posting this sign is stupid and useless. I figured that if we called ourselves Hadag Nahash and got people to put our stickers on the back of their cars, we would help create chaos and confuse the police" -- which, he adds mischievously, "is always a good thing."

"Hadag Nahash is nothing like mainstream American rap groups that sing about drugs, money and girls," says Yarden Schneider, events coordinator of the Israel Center in San Francisco, which is cosponsoring the band's visit with the Consulate General of Israel in San Francisco and the Jewish Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma counties. "The band is similar to The Roots in America. Both sing socially conscious, positive hip-hop."

This approach is exactly what makes Hadag Nahash a leading band in Israel, Schneider says. "The reason it's so popular is that it questions status quo ideas of what is accepted in the media or government. It's not necessarily leftist, but it is challenging things you're supposed to take for granted in Israel. That's why they have so many groupies: They really give the voice of the average young Israeli person."

For these reasons, Schneider expects the band will have special appeal to local youth. "In the Bay Area, hip-hop is a vehicle for the voice of the streets, for talking to the government. Hadag Nahash reflects the critical mentality of Bay Area youth."

Shai Mansoor, an 18-year-old student at De Anza College in Cupertino, and the grandson of Iraqi Jews -- "on both sides," he emphasizes -- is one of many local fans who already love the band because of its message.

"About two years ago," he recounts, "I was watching the Israeli music video channel while visiting my relatives in Tel Aviv, and I saw Hadag Nahash performing 'Misparim.' I had been listening to a lot of East Coast rap, so I was really interested to find out about Israeli hip-hop. I started listening to Hadag Nahash, and I realized there was more to this group than a good groove -- there was meaning to the lyrics."

Gabriel Salgado, a seventh-grade camp director at Temple Isaiah in Lafayette, was so inspired by the lyrics' message that he created an entire curriculum based on "The Sticker Song" -- Hadag Nahash's current chart- topping hit in Israel. The Israel Center has since posted this curriculum on their Web site (www.israelcentersf.org).

"This is an opportunity to educate about the complexities of issues in Israel," says Israel Center's executive director Shlomi Ravid. "I think it's really important that people get beyond stereotypes."

In addition to challenging stereotypes about what Israelis think, Hadag Nahash's appearance will challenge stereotypes about who Israelis are. Reflecting Israel's Jewish population, four band members are sons of Jewish refugees from North Africa and the Middle East -- Morocco, Yemen, and Iran - - and two band members trace their families back 500 years in Jerusalem, where their ancestors fled after the Inquisition and Expulsion of Jews from Spain.

Beyond educating local audiences about Israeli politics, social disobedience and genealogy, however, Hadag Nahash plans to show the Bay Area a good time.

"Hadag Nahash is unlike anything we know here," says Matar Davis, 18, a student at UC Berkeley who has seen the band perform in Israel. "The music is signature Israeli fusion ... Listening to this completely new style of music is amazing. The crowds won't be able to pinpoint what it is, what it reminds them of, but it will strike a chord in them.